I'm guessing my Librarian friends will appreciate this

(Name changed for privacy.)

So I went looking for the Employee ID of Anne Brindle Cady in our HR system to create an account. (All accounts get paired with their EID -- my idea.)

I couldn't find it listed under Cady, and asked the requester to tell me what it is (implying, if you haven't told HR about her, you'd better get on it!).

Requester gets back with the number. Huh. I look it up, and find it under "Brindle Cady, Anne". I send a note to the relevant HR person pointing out the mistake, saying that sure makes it hard to find this person by full name.

They reply that Anne says her last name is in fact "Brindle Cady", so that's how it went into the system.

!!!

According to that way of thinking, it's possible for two people to have full names that are written identically in every way, but who have different last names!

Anne Brindle Cady (with a last name of "Brindle Cady", alphabetizing under "B") and...
Anne Brindle Cady (with a last name of "Cady" and middle name "Brindle", alphabetizing under "C")